atthew Somerville Morgan (1837-1890) is probably – aside from the men of Punch – the best-known and best-studied cartoonist of the Victorian Age. A conservative and aspirational man, but expressing often quite radical views, Morgan’s twin cartoons for The Tomahawk, imagining Queen Victoria having abandoned the throne, or – worse – allowed her Highland Gillie John Brown to take control, are still well-known today. But they were just one aspect (or two) of a much more variegated career and life-story. — Richard Scully
Biographical Material
Cartoons for Fun
- Defeated — Wounded — Captured
- Delightful
- Painters, Beware! A Fact
- Political Whist
- Excursion Intelligence
- A Fitting Question
- A Surising Success
- The Dryads of Disfranchisements
- Ireland's Opportunity
Illustrations for Robinson Crusoe
- Crusoe a Slave
- Crusoe and the Planters
- Crusoe Loading His Raft
- Crusoe Making a Coat
- Crusoe at Dinner
- Crusoe in His Fort
- Crusoe Instructing Friday
- Crusoe and Friday on the Hill
- Crusoe and Friday Felling Wood
- Crusoe Conferring with the Spaniard
- The Mutineers Overpowered
- Death of the Rebel Captain
- Crusoe Welcomed by the Spaniard
- The Pirate Firing the Hut
Bibliography
Bunker, Gary L., ‘The Comic News, Lincoln, and the Civil War’, xJournal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 17, no.1 (Winter 1996): 53-87.
Kemnitz, Thomas Milton, ‘Matt Morgan of “Tomahawk” and English Cartooning, 1867-1870’, Victorian Studies XIX, no.1, (September 1975): 5-34.
Kent, Christopher, ‘Spectacular History as an Ocular Discipline’, Wide Angle 18, no.3 (July 1996): 1-21.
_____. ‘The Angry Young Gentlemen of Tomahawk’, in Barbara Garlick & Margaret Harris (eds), Victorian Journalism: Exotic and Domestic. Essays in Honour of P. D. Edwards. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1998. 75-94.
_____. ‘War Cartooned/Cartoon War: Matt Morgan and the American Civil War in Fun and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Victorian Periodicals Review 36, no.2 (Summer, 2003). 153-181.
_____. ‘Matt Morgan and Transatlantic Illustrated Journalism, 1850-90’, in Joel H. Wiener & Mark Hampton (eds). Anglo-American Media Interactions, 1850-2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 69-92.
Scully, Richard. ‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre, Art and Journalism in Victorian London’, Journal of Victorian Culture 16, no.3 (December 2011): 363-384.
_____. ‘Sex, Art and the Victorian Cartoonist: Matthew Somerville Morgan in Victorian Britain and America’. International Journal of Comic Art. 13, no.1 (Spring 2011): 291-325.
_____. Eminent Victorian Cartoonists – Volume II: The Rivals of ‘Mr Punch’. London: Political Cartoon Society, 2018 (esp. pp.8-50).
Created 21 February 2022